Trudy Gold
Zionism in World War II
Trudy Gold | Zionism in World War II | 06.14.21
- I think what’s amazing is I feel connected to so many people online. It’s fabulous.
Exactly. So that is the objective. So no wonder we’re family, and I want to say to everybody, you know, I have this wonderful book was made for me, and I-
You’ve got it. You’ve got it. Okay.
It just arrived yesterday, funny enough, and I honestly, I have received the most, most beautiful messages from all of you, and I just want to thank you, and I mean, Denise went to so much trouble, and I’m sure you all did just to make this happen, and then also I had a wonderful box, also with personal messages, and I feel very, very blessed. Actually, these are the presents that are the most meaningful because, you know, they’re heartfelt, and they are very dear and precious, yeah, you just,- no money.
It seems- you’ve done something lately.
No money can by love.
No amount of money.
You’ve done something.
No, no, no, you know what? Love and appreciation and just remember, to all our participants. We could not have done this without you. So thank you Trudy, and Judy, and do you know it’s a collective. It’s a Gestalt. So we need people to man it. We need, you know, special people to organise it, to present, to put it together, and then of course we need participant. So together, we’ve created the most beautiful community, and I’m really looking forward to, like, just taking this further.
It would be wonderful-
So before…
If you want
Yeah.
Okay. Okay. I’m ready when you are, my darling. Shall I start now?
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Over to you.
Okay. And enjoy, I know it’s too late for the birthday, but keep enjoying it, Wendy.
The whole year.
We all think-
the world of you. That is .
Thank you.
All right.
We have to celebrate-
every single day.
I know that.
And look forward to that-
next birthday.
Not just one.
All a gift.
All a gift. Thank you.
All right. Thanks Wendy.
Good luck, everybody.
God bless.
Anyway, well, good afternoon from London in a very, very hot London.
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And now I’m coming to, again, a very tough, controversial issue. I’m going to be looking at Zionism in the war. And it’s very important that Dennis and David have already begun to look at the Zionism as racism motion, because underlying it all, is before I can even get onto what happened in the war, it all starts with a conundrum, doesn’t it? It starts with a conundrum in the Jewish world to perceive what was considered, to actually come up with a solution for what was perceived to be the Jewish problem.
Isn’t it fascinating, we’re such a numerically tiny people, from Judaism has sprung the two most, the two largest religions in the world, Islam and Christianity. In fact, Christianity at the moment has more adherence than Islam, but it’s thought that Islam will take the balance within 20 years. But these two religions see themselves as the heir and as the supersedures of Judaism. And of course that put the Jews in a very, very strange position in the diaspora. And you could make the case that really for the first 1,800 years of the diaspora, certainly in the Christian world, the Jews lived very much as an outside community, living according to their own ways, surviving as best they could from country to country, and of course that incredibly tragic, but also rich history.
And then it changed everything. Everything changes. Not because of the Jews themselves, but because of the European Enlightenment. And having discussed this with Wendy, one of the things that I’m going to be doing, I think that we need to develop further, particularly in the light of what David and Dennis have done, we need to develop further the whole notion of Jewish identity and what it means. You see, up until the European Enlightenment, a Jew would never have been asked the question, “What are you?” A Jew was a Jew was a Jew. You would’ve been within the religious community. It would not have been asked.
But don’t forget, it’s the French Revolution and the American Revolution that changes everything, because the French Revolution actually said, “To the Jews as individuals, everything. To the Jews as a community, nothing.” We will emancipate the 40,000 Jews of France. You can be as of us. You can enter whatever trades professions you can get into. You can go to our universities. No longer the greatest prize for a yeshiva bahur is the great Yeshiva. It can be the Sohar, later on the University of Berlin, Vienna, Paris. In America it could be Harvard, it could be Yale. You can scale the heights. And a love affair begins.
So the Enlightenment said “You are a religion.” And not only that, more and more Jews fell in love with the world of the Enlightenment. They fell in love with France and Britain and Germany, wherever they lived, and as I’ve said to you many, many times, and I know you know it from your own reading, it was an extraordinary success story. Unfortunately, it coincided with the development of race theory, ultra nationalisms of the 19th century, which said, hold on a minute, a Jew can’t really be English, French, et cetera. The notion of a separate race.
And this is where Zionism comes in, because it’s a few alienated Jews in the West and in Russia who looked at the nationalisms around them, who looked at the rise of Jew hatred. The term antisemitism as a racial term was coined in 1878, but I’m going to call it Jew hatred. They looked, despite the fact that Jews were trying so hard in the West to be useful citizens out of all proportion to their numbers, they looked at it all and they realised that Jews were not being accepted. You just have to think of the words of Moses Hess. “The Germans hate the Jews, not because of their peculiar religion, but because of their peculiar noses.”
It’s racial. And on a positive note, they also looked at nationalism itself. They looked at the national, the Habsburg Empire is fracturing 15 different national groups. Germany, strong nationalisms. Even the British with the largest empire in the world, they referred to the British race. Can Jews really be part of that? And it led them to look at their own history. We were once a great nation and now we are scattered, but we have a common history, a common culture, a common language, or do we? What we lack is common geography.
The term Zionism was not born until 1891, coined by Nathan Birnbaum, but the ideas predated. And the reason I’m bringing this in now before we get to the war, it’s important that you understand that the Zionism is a very muddled concept. When we talk of, when the United Nations proclaim that Zionism is racism, do they really know what Zionism means? And within the Zionist movement itself, and here I’m looking at the work of Gil Troy. Back in 1959, Arthur Hertzberg, who was a historian and a rabbi, a brilliant man. He wrote the seminal text on Zionism, it’s called “The Zionist Idea.”
In 2017, another brilliant historian, Gil Troy, updated it. It’s called “The Zionist Ideas,” and those of you who are serious about understanding the history of Zionism and reading the texts that the leading Zionists themselves wrote, that is the book you need. Anyway, Gil Troy lists six different branches of Zionism. There is Political Zionism, as of course, personified by Theodor Herzl and his followers. What they said is, “We must create a state,” then, and of course his famous, if you think of the “Judenstaat,” “Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the requirements of a nation. The rest we will manage for ourselves.” Then you have Labour Zionism.
This is Syrkin Borochov who say, “Yes, we must create our own entity, but it’s going to be based on the principles of socialism and social justice.” These are the ideas that of course, entranced characters like Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, Ben-Zvi, the people who later created the state. And then of course you have Revisionist Zionism. This is the work of Vladimir Jabotinsky and that Max Nordau, Begin. And their idea, if we go back to Jabotinsky himself, it’s really liberal romanticism. And it’s revisionism because what he said back in 1922 is that he wanted land both sides of the Jordan.
The fourth is Religious Zionism. This is the work of people like rabbis Alkalai and Kalischer, and of course the saintly Rav Kook, that you go to the land, you perform the mitzvah. and don’t forget that this thread of Messianism is within the Jewish tradition. If you think about us, even the most secular of us, when we sit round the table at the Seder service, we say next year in Jerusalem is absolutely central to our belief system. And what is also true is that within the Hebrew Bible and in the apocryphal, there are many Messianic dreams. and Messianic claimants. Bar Kokhba was proclaimed messiah. But what is messiahship actually about in Jewish terms? It is to liberate the Jews.
Well they went for it 2,000 years ago and look what happened to them. Judah was destroyed. The Jewish settlement was destroyed. Judea was destroyed. It was renamed Palestrina for the enemies of the Jews, the Philistines. And you can make the case and many scholars do, that the rabbinum really did, the Talmudists rather, did excise messiahship from the centre of belief systems because it leads to revolt. And of course you can then talk about the Quietism. And the other point that the Zionist hammered, the Jews had no power in the diaspora. All they could do is to react to other people.
And then of course you have the Cultural Zionism of Aharon. The dreamy, idealistic Zionism, which doesn’t concentrate so much on a state or even a homeland, but as a centre, which will become the spiritual, intellectual, and moral wellspring that will send to quote the Bible that will to send the message from the land to the diaspora, and thus light up the whole world. This is Cultural Zionism. And then of course there’s Diaspora Zionism that’s personified by people like Louis Brandeis and Henrietta Szold. What do they say? “We support the Jewish endeavour in Palestine, but we will live in the diaspora and be happy in the countries in which we live.”
So it’s important to remember that within the Zionist movement itself, and it still exists to this day, and I would suggest to you that one of the reasons we expect such extraordinary standards from the Jewish state is that it is because of the legacy of Cultural Zionism, Socialist Zionism, which was the notion of creating a utopia. Anyway, these are the kind of threads within Zionism. You know, what is it, what is it that the All Mighty said of the Jews? “We are a stubborn and stiff necked people. We argue, we argue, we argue.”
So the first point I really wanted to illustrate was that the Zionist movement itself in 1939 was divided. However, what is also true is that, what did the Zionist believe? Let’s go. There’s one belief that most of them shared. All you have to do is to go back to Leon Pinsker. Leon Pinsker was a Jew from the Russian Empire, who for a short time had believed in the reign of Alexander II, that Russia would emulate the West. When the pogroms occurred, He writes an important tract called “Auto Emancipation,” and he says this, “The world suffers from Judaphobia. it’s a psychic aberration. It’s a 2,000 year old disease. It is incurable.”
Now, this is another important thread in Zionism that the nations of the world, and let’s be realistic about this, the nations of the Western world, because if we get into the Jews of China and the Jews of Hindu, India, we don’t have any of these kind of problems. Other issues, but not these problems. That in the West because, and let’s be bald about it, because of the image of the Jew and the deicide and the marginalisation and the degradation of the Jew for 1,800 years, it’s too deep to get rid of. So apart from the Diaspora Zionist, the majority of the Zionists thought there was something wrong with the diaspora. and some of them, like Peretz Smolenskin, talks about how the diaspora itself, how we behave in the diaspora, we tody up to the Gentiles, we imitate the Gentiles. We need to reclaim our own ancient homeland.
And of course, with the work of Ben-Yehuda, our own language. So in 1939, these differences had not disappeared. and on the contrary, they’d exacerbated because of the tragedy that was looming. In 1937, when Weizmann gives evidence to the appeal commission, what does he say? That there are 6 million Jews who were at threat. He begs the British to at least save 2 million. At least, at least save the young. And what about Jabotinsky? When he gives his evidence, he says, there are three or four million Jews in the East who will die. Even Trotsky, he talks, he talks from Mexico. He said, the world is divided up into those countries that won’t let the Jews in and those countries that won’t let the Jews live.
So there is a foreboding, and it must have been absolutely horrific in August, 1939, at the first, at the last Zionist Congress before the war when August ‘39 remember, when they knew that something terrible was happening. Because what had happened in May, 1939, the British government, according to the Zionists, reneged on the Belfour Declaration and issued the White Paper on Palestine, which meant that only 15,000 Jews a year for five years would be allowed into Palestine, and then whoever has the majority has the state. And what it meant really was do for the Jews of Europe.
Now, we’ve got to be careful here, the Nazis, their henchmen, and their allies did it. But to what extent were the British, and to a lesser extent, I suppose, the Americans, actually negligent. Can I use that word? In not saving. Look, nobody could have predicted the Holocaust in '39, really. Just take the words of Nahum Goldmann, “You needed to have the soul of a poet, a Dante, to imagine the inferno.” But nevertheless, there was enough. And there’s that terrible speech of Jabotinsky, in Poland on Tisha B'Av, where he says to them, “Get out, get out. While you still can.” I mean, Jabotinsky, the warlike one, he was just as powerless as everybody else. In fact, when war breaks out in 19… What happens is the British issue the White Paper in May, 1939.
And it’s at this stage that the Irgun decide to fight the British. And between May and September 1939, that’s exactly what happens. When war breaks out, over 100,000 Jews in Palestine out of a population of 550,000, they register for military service within the first month of the war. Think about what was happening in Britain. It wasn’t until the fall of Holland that this happens in Britain. And the, but the foreign office was reluctant to accept a huge amount of Jews into the army. They knew that they’d be training people who at one time will go against them. So they set up what they called the Parroty scheme. If Arabs joined the army, Jews can, but of course the Arabs didn’t. And the Arabs also looking at the British and French colonisers began to flirt with the Germans, and I’ll talk about this later on.
And of course, the man who led the Arabs, who unfortunately had become a total fanatic, Haj Amin al-Husseini, he wasn’t even allowed back into Palestine. He was, he spent the war, for the first part of the war in Iraq. and then he goes to spend the war with Hitler in Berlin. Anyway, it’s not until the Afrika Korps or at the Gates of Alexandria, that the foreign office, they abandoned the Parroty Agreement and 20,000 young Jews joined the British army. 10% of them, by the way, were women. And by 1944, there were 32,000 of them in military service. There’s, and it, but it wasn’t until the spring of 1944 that the Jewish brigade was actually allowed to fly its own flag. And they chose a yellow star of David, you know, the badge of shame of the Ghetto, the badge of shame of the Nazis, and they fought brilliantly.
And also there are an awful lot of German Jews who were incredibly useful to the British, German and Austrian Jews who had the languages, who were involved in all sorts of clandestine operations and were involved in all sorts of spying operations, which we’ll be talking about later on in the sessions. Also, the Yishuv was incredibly important in the economic mobilisation that it gave to the war effort. They were absolutely essential in the production of war goods. Tanks, engines, supplying food stuffs. The kibbutz were supplying food stuffs to the British Army. Uniforms, making parachutes, hospital equipment.
The British also in 1944 did allow 250 young Jewish volunteers, Zionist volunteers in Palestine, to parachute into Europe to help save and of course, amongst them was Hannah Szenes, the extraordinary Hannah Szenes. However, during the hold of the war, despite the collusion of the Arabs, and I’m very glad that Lyn Julius is coming in this week to begin to talk about the Jews of the Arab world and what happened to them during and after the war.
Despite the collusion, despite the fact that there was an anti-British uprising in Iraq, which led to a terrible massacre of the Jews. There was, and there was, and please don’t forget, in Vichy, France, in Lebanon, in Syria, there were all sorts of problems for the British. The British still don’t amend the White Paper. So that is the actual facts on the ground. What I now want to do is to show you a short film. This is the film, one of the films that we made. It’s trudygold.com. and it was, the whole endeavour was started by a friend of mine, Doreen Brown, and I hope she’s listening because we owe her a great tribute. And wonderfully, Wendy and the Kirsh Foundation took over the making of these films, and I’m very pleased to say that they’ve been seen by over 500,000 young people.
And let me give you something positive. I think these films with other study guides can be very useful for your children and grandchildren. Those of you who are worried about your kids going up to university and knowing nothing. So I’m going to show you now, one of the films we made. I made it with a brilliant young filmmaker called Ollie Anisfeld. So if we could have that please, Judy, if you don’t mind.
[Clip plays]
Back in May, 1939, the British mandate authorities had horrified the Jewish world by issuing a White Paper. To the Zionists it was the nullification of the Balfour Declaration and attack on the Jewish people in their time of greatest need. The White Paper restricted Jewish immigration to 15,000 a year for five years, and then whoever had the majority would have the state. This meant another Arab state in the Middle East.
Politically, the British government was in a difficult situation. The Arabs were under the fanatical leadership of Haj Amin al-Husseini. He was a great admirer of Hitler and spent some of the war in Berlin. He would not countenance any further Jewish immigration. He warned the British that in any future conflict, unless they complied, the Arabs would rise up against them.
Neville Chamberlain had stated, “If we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews.” Churchill had countered, “This is another Munich. We are asked to submit to agitation, which is ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and fascist propaganda.” In August, 1939 at the last Zionist Congress before the war, Ben-Gurion, head of the Yishuv stated, “We will fight the White Paper as if there is no Hitler and fight Hitler as if there is no White Paper.”
Throughout the war, despite evidence of genocide, the mandate authorities adhered to the quota. Back in 1934, the Aliyah Bet, the organisation for clandestine immigration, had been created. Between 1934 and 1942, it was an effort to enable Jews to escape the horrors of Nazism. From 1945 to 1948, it was a crucial part of the Bricha Movement. At the end of the war, Germany was divided between the four occupying powers. The Bricha Movement funnelled Jews into the American zone in Germany. The Americans imposed no restriction on movement out of the camps and were often sympathetic.
There was also political motivation to pressure the Americans, to pressure the British, to open the gates of Palestine to the survivors. More than 50,000 survivors escaped from European ports on route to the land of Israel. Many of the boats were piloted by allied Jewish war veterans, mainly Americans. The British established armed patrols to stop the survivor’s reaching land. Over half the boats were captured by the Royal Navy. 50,000 people were sent to camps on Cyprus, some to Atlit, and some to Mauritius. 1,600 Jews were drowned. One of the reasons Zionism and the creation of the state became such an imperative was because of knowledge of what was happening in Europe.
Back in 1939, Nahum Goldmann, who later became head of the world Jewish Congress, said, “Even in 1939, I could not have have imagined Auschwitz. You needed the soul of a poet, a Dante, to imagine the inferno.” And yet there was knowledge. On the 16th of December, 1939, a headline in the London Times read, “The Stony road to extermination.” It reported on a German plan to deport more than a million Jews to Eastern Europe. Knowledge was coming through from many sources in neutral countries, from clergy, and particularly from the Polish Underground, and government in exile in London.
On May the third, 1941, the Polish government sent a formal note to the allied governments and mutual powers describing how tens of thousands of Jews were being incarcerated in camps. The final solution itself began with the invasion of Russia on Sunday, the 22nd of June, 1941. From then on, more reports were coming through. On the 27th of November, 1941, Gerhard Riegner of the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland sent a report to Jerusalem. “With regards to the Jews, it seems no place whatsoever has been allocated to them in Hitler’s Europe. The remnants who escaped the massacres, starvations, and oppression of the ghettos, are no doubt to be sent overseas.”
On the 6th of January, 1942, Molotov, the Russian Foreign Minister, sent a note to the Western allies. In it, he gave a stark account, town by town, of what he described as abominable violence, outrage, and massacre. He gave details of mass killings in the Ukraine, 6,000 in Lviv, 8,000 Odessa, 7,000 Kerch, 10,500 Dnipropetrovsk. Mainly old men, women and children, all of whom were stripped naked, robbed of their possessions before being shot into the pits.
In May, 1942, the Zionist organisation met at the Biltmore Hotel in New York and demanded a Jewish state now. “So the age old wrong to the Jewish people be righted.” On November the 29th, 1942, Ben-Gurion gave an address to the Yishuv National Council. “We do not know exactly what goes on in the Nazi Valley of Death, and how many Jews have already been slaughtered, murdered, burnt, or buried alive, and how many others are being doomed to annihilation. Only from time to time does news of atrocities break through to us. The screams of women and children mutilated and crushed. But we do know what Hitler has in store for our people, and what he wrote in Mein Kampf, and what he has done to us before the war, during the war. We do not know that the victory of democracy and freedom and justice will not find Europe a vast Jewish cemetery in which the bones of our people are scattered, and our bleeding nation caused the conscience of humanity to trial before the judgement of history.
We are the only people in the world whose blood as a nation is allowed to be shed. Only our children, our women, our brothers, are set apart for special treatment. To be buried alive, graves dug by them, to be cremated in crematoriums, to be strangled, and to be murdered by machine guns, for but one sin. Because the Jews have no state, no army, no independence, no homeland. We demand the right to a homeland and independence. What happened to us in Poland, what God forbid will happen to us in the future, all our innocent victims, all our tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, are the sacrifices of a people without a homeland. Let us tell our dear brothers, martyred and tortured in the Nazi ghettos. Your tragedy is our tragedy. Your blood is our blood. We shall have no rest until we redeem you both from the Nazi hell and from the debilitating exile, and bring you to the land we are building and redeeming, to our land.”
November the 23rd, 1942, the headline in “The Palestine Post,” “Slaughter of European Jewry.” Subheading, “Annihilation of Whole Communities.” The Jewish Agency of Palestine declared four days of mourning, culminating in a fast day on December the second, 1942. All this and other information, including the leaking of events at the Wannsee Conference of January, 1942, finally led to the Allied Declaration.
On December the 17th, 1942, the governments in London, Moscow, and New York made a statement. This is Anthony Eden, British Foreign Secretary. “The German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler’s often repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.”
Throughout the war, the Zionist leadership of all shades sent cries of help to the allied governments and church leaders to stop the slaughter of the Jewish people. The Zionists believed that even after knowledge of the death camps in the East, there was no real effort to save Jewish life. Yes, there were extraordinary people in many countries, but in terms of the enormity of the problem, it made very little difference. The case of Hungarian Jewry was particularly poignant.
Until March, 1944, Hungary was allied to Germany. The 800,000 Hungarian Jews were living under an autocratic semi-fascistic regime, but in the main, they were not deported. Admiral Horthy refused to deport his Jews. On the 19th of April, 1944, Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest and began his plans. Following the German occupation, the Nazis with cooperation from Hungarian fascists and police succeeded in deporting and murdering over 596,000 men, women, and children in Auschwitz. At the end of the war, the Zionists were determined that Palestine be opened to Jewish settlement and ultimately a Jewish state.
[Clip ends]
Thank you, Judy.
Okay, now why did the Zionists call the Biltmore Conference and why was it in America? Well, after the British issued the White Paper, and as they still wouldn’t open the gates of Palestine, in fact, as you know, and as we’ve discussed, some of the boats that tried to run the gauntlet to Palestine, hundreds of people were drowned, and there were all sorts of rescue attempts that were actually thwarted by the British.
So they were looking for new sponsors. And what other sponsor, but America. In fact, it was the revisionists under a man called Peter Bergson, who was the nephew of Kook, he took an alias, Hillel Kook, while he was actually in America. He worked with extraordinary characters like Ben Hecht, we’ve talked about them in the past, really going and going for it, alerting the American public opinion. There were pageants, and also there was a shift in Zionist opinion. Chaim Weizmann, the grand old man of Zionism, he had put his faith in the British. He was totally shaken in 1939.
But the young militants, particularly people like Ben-Gurion, they and Abba Hillel Silver, the American Zionist, they realised that what they had to do was go for a strong declaration. No longer pussy footing around with Homeland, going along with all sorts of accommodation. From now on, we’ve got to demand a state. And it’s interesting because there’d been one organisation that had constantly demanded a state, and that was the revisionists. And I want to say here, I think one of the great tragedies of the Jews and the Zionist movement in the twenties and thirties, those terrible quarrels, which in the end has led to the kind of bad blood we still see in Israel to this day. I personally think it just stemmed from powerlessness.
You know, in the end, neither Jabotinsky, nor Ben-Gurion, nor Weizmann, nor any of the others could actually have enough impact to make the allies change their policies. And the irony is that they believed, even at that time, they still believed in the myth of Jewish power. And tragically, as David and Dennis were speaking on Sunday, it’s still an incredible threat, even though this must have been the greatest example of powerlessness in modern history. And yet there’s still the notion of the Jews and money and power. It’s so deep, it’s so entrenched, it’s going to take the most brilliant kind of understanding to attempt to reverse this terrible Jew hatred, and maybe that’s something that we have to put our minds to. That’s just a personal thought of mine.
So it’s obvious it has to be in America and it has to be more militant, and consequently, that is exactly what happens. They make the statement at the Biltmore Hotel. I’m just going to read you the end of the statement. All these documents come either from “The Zionist Idea,” “The Zionist Ideas,” or “The Jew in the Modern World.” Those of you who want to seriously study Jewish history, these are the books that are essential for you to have the source material. So, “In the struggle against the forces of aggression and tyranny of which Jews were the earliest victims, and which now menace the Jewish National Home, recognition must be given to the rights of the Jews of Palestine to play their full part in the war effort and in the defence of their country through a Jewish military force fighting under its own flag and under the high command of the United Nations.”
There was such faith in those days. “The conference declares that the new world order that will follow victory cannot be established on foundations of peace, justice, and equality, unless the problem of Jewish homelessness is finally solved. The conference urges that the gates of Palestine be opened; that the Jewish Agency be vested with control of immigration into Palestine and with the necessary authority for upbuilding the country, including the development of its unoccupied and uncultivated lands; and that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of a new democratic world. Then and only then will the age old wrong to the Jewish people be righted.”
You know, it’s fascinating that the British was still adopting their pro Arab policy. Ironically, the Labour Party took a completely different line. And I’m just going to give you a couple of insights into the kind of work that the Mufti was doing for the Germans. He was very useful reviewing Muslim regiments in Bosnia. There was a large division of Muslims fighting with the Germans, and this is the pamphlet that he issued to them. “The Day of the Judgement will come, when the Muslims will crush the Jews completely: And when every tree behind which a Jew hides will say, 'There was a Jew behind me, Kill him’.”
And this is a radio broadcast on the 1st of March, 1944, “Radio Berlin.” “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews whenever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honour. God is with you.” I want to say, and of course, he visited Sachsenhausen and a speech in November 43. “It’s the duty of Muslims in general and Arabs in particular, to drive all Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. Germany is also struggling against the common foe for the oppressed Arab and Muslim in different countries. It is very clearly recognised that the Jews for what they are and resolve to find a definitive solution for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that the Jews represent in this world.”
Now, I want to say very carefully though, that is not the position of the majority of Arabs in Palestine. In fact, between 1936 and 1939, many moderate Arabs were murdered on the orders of Haj Amin al-Husseini. What was the tragedy was that the Arab leadership was fanatical, not the people, and tragically later on it is the Palestinian people who are going to play so terribly for that particular price. Now, what then happens is of course, that as particularly after news of Hungary comes through, after the White Paper was issued, I mentioned that the Irgun continued the fight against the British.
When the British declared war, the Irgun rejoined the Haganah. The Irgun was much smaller than the Haganah by the way. They rejoined the British arm. They attempted to join the British army. They weren’t allowed in for a while. Although the leader of the Irgun, David Raziel, was very important to the British. He was involved in all sorts of clandestine operations and actually lost his life fighting for the British. But there was a small group of, of Irgun people led by Stern, and he said the British were as bad as the Nazis. They’re stopping Jewish rescue, and he continued the fight against the British until he was killed. He was actually, he was actually executed by, he was shot by the British when he was already in their custody. It’s again, there’s so much bad blood in this whole story.
In 1944, Begin arrives in Palestine. He’d been working for Anders’ army. They are, he leaves the the army, and he’s demobbed, and he takes, he’d always been an Irgunist. He was a great supporter of Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky thought a lot of him. He saw him as his heir. Jabotinsky had died in the summer of 1940 at a Betar camp. And it’s Begin who takes over the Irgun, and it’s he who decides that they are going to rejoin the fight against the British. So the Irgun, they issue a pamphlet. If I can find that pamphlet is quite important. Why are my notes in the mess?
Anyway, basically, they decide they’re going to rejoin and they issue a pamphlet explaining that they are, they are going to, and the Irgun and the Stern, which by this time has one of its leaders, Shamir. It’s interesting, isn’t it, Ben-Gur-, because what happens to Weizmann in 1945, at the Zionist Congress of 1945, Ben-Gurion and Abba Hillel Silva, they just don’t, they don’t trust him anymore. They still respect him, but he’s too pro British. And for a while there is no head of The World Zionist Organisation. And in a way, he gets the consolation prize when Israel is founded.
So what happens, what happens at the end of the war, the Irgun and the Haganah, the Haganah has been fighting with the British, the Palmach. The Irgun and the Stern rejoin the fight against the British, and that’s the situation at the end of the war. I just want to quote you from Albert Einstein because Albert Einstein later on was a war, was offered the Presidency of Israel. And I think it’s important to set the record straight. Back in May, 1930, he’d written a note to Albert, he’d written a note to Chaim Weizmann. The two of them were very close. They’d been on fundraising drives to the Hebrew University. He believed passionately in the Hebrew University.
And however, in 1930, he writes this letter to Weizmann. “If we do not find the past honest cooperation, an honest negotiation with the Arabs, then we’ve learned nothing from our 2,000 years of suffering, or we deserve the fate that will be follow us. Above all, we should be careful not to rely on the English, for if we don’t get a real cooperation with the leading Arabs, then the English will drop us, if not officially, but defacto, and they will lament our debacle with traditional pious glances towards heaven with insurances of their innocence and without lifting a finger.”
However, in 1944, he wrote a, he actually wrote another pamphlet and he wrote it with a friend of his, Erich Kahler, and in that pamphlet, it’s very, he has a very, very different thing to say. He has a very, very different message. This is after evidence has come through. And he was so, remember, he’s a German Jew. He’s at Princeton. He’s at the centre of German Jewish immigration. He’d given his name to the creation of the bomb. He knows perhaps more than anyone, because he came from Germany, what was going on.
And this is what he wrote with his friend Kahler. “Even if we put aside the spiritual, religious, and cultural ties, making Palestine the only place in the world which persecuted Jews consider their home, and develop with all their devotion, a homeland that inspires, there is not even any other country acceptable to human beings, which the numerous refugee conferences were able to offer to this hounded people.”
He’s thinking about Evian, he’s thinking about the cries of the homeless who are desperate to get out of Germany. And never forget that Hitler does not stop immigration from Germany and Austria until 19, October, 1941. After the final solution has begun. “The Jews are prepared for extreme sacrifices and hardest work to convert this narrow strip, which is Palestine into a prosperous country and model civilization. The true source of Arab resistance and hostility towards Jewish Palestine is neither religious nor political, but social and economic. The big offenders fear the example and the impulse which the Jewish colonisation of Palestine presents to the peoples of the Near East. They resent the economic uplift of the Arabs, their workers in Palestine. They act as all fascist forces have acted. They screen their fear of social reform behind nationalist slogans and demagoguery.” I can never get my tongue around that word.
“The purpose of this statement is not a nationalistic one. We do not, and the vast majority of Jews do not advocate the establishment of a state for the sake of a national greed and self glorification, which would run counter to all the traditional values of Judaism and which we consider obsolete everywhere. In speaking up for a Jewish Palestine, we want to promote the establishment of a place of refuge where persecuted human beings may find security and peace and the undisputed right to live under a law and order of their making. The experience of many centuries has taught us that this can be provided only by home rule and not by foreign administration. This is why we stand for a Jewish controlled Palestine, be it ever so modest and so small. We do not refer to historic rights, although if there exists something like a historic right over a country, the Jews, at least as well as the Arabs, could claim it in Palestine. We do not resort to threats of power, for the Jews have no power. They are in fact the most powerless group on earth. If they had had any power, they should have been able to prevent the annihilation of millions of their people, and the closing of the last door to the helpless victims of the Nazis. What we appeal to is an elementary sense of justice and humanity.”
So even Einstein, who was a great humanitarian, he comes down on the side of statehood. And it’s important to remember that up until 1933, the majority of Jews in the world were not Zionists. Many of the ultra religious in Eastern Europe, to them the Messiah had to come and to the Jews living in London, in Paris, in Berlin, in New York, they really did believe in the Emancipation Contract. And if things are wavering, it’s going to get better. You are back to exactly what I started with, what is the riddle of the Jew? What does that word mean? What does it mean to all of us?
And certainly it’s, in sometime between 1939 and 1945, that is when Zionism becomes the majority movement in the Jewish world. And it’s of course, what we’ll be doing in the next few weeks, we will get up to the birth of Israel. But what I’m going to look at tomorrow actually is the Vatican during the war and the escape routes. But I’ll be going back to 1945 next week. But as I said, you’re going to have Lyn Julius this week beginning a series of lectures on the Jews of the Arab world. So I think we should stop there. I’m sorry, that was a long document, but I thought it was so beautiful that I wanted to conclude with Einstein, who after all was “Time Magazine’s,” “Man of the Century.”
So thank you. and let’s have a look at the questions. Okay.
Q&A and Comments
A lot of nice things being said, Wendy.
John Thurston is talking about Ravensbruck, the woman’s prison. Yes, of course. That was terrible. One of the decisions we had to make, John, when we looked at the show, as I said to you, we could have spent a whole year on it. We had to pick and choose and sometimes we made omissions. And of course, studying of Ravensbruck is incredibly important. We are actually having a lecture on the 28th on “Women in the Partisan Movement.” Judy Batalion’s new book. She’s going to be coming in.
This is from Devora. “Thank you for calling it Jew hatred. I’ve been doing this for six months and I’ve been called down on this.” Yes, “ came before Ben-Gurion.”
Yes, of course, David. I have lectured on all of this in depth. So this was just as a way of getting everyone into this.
Q: “Antisemitism. Do I think it distinguishes between Zion and another form of Jewish identity?” A: And you are answering sadly, I think no. No, no, I totally agree with you.
Q: “What was the difference between Diaspora Zionist and Bundists?” A: That’s a very, very good question, Helen. Bundists, and they were the largest group in Eastern Europe with the politicos. Bundists believed in fighting for the Revolution, but once the Revolution was over, they wanted Jewish autonomy in Russia. They were socialists. They promoted Yiddish culture. And whereas Diaspora Zionists were people living in the diaspora who wanted to support the existence of the State of Israel. Wanted to support the setting up of the State of Israel, but did not necessarily think they had to live there. Again, the model of what it means to be a Zionist, we need clarification on that word.
Esther, “Rabbi Kook knew how to adapt the economy of Israel to Torah law. He was a wonderful man.” Nice thing people are liking the film. Yes, please don’t forget. And again, huge thanks to the Kirsh Foundation. We’ve made 16 of them and we are making more. We made them primarily for sixth-formers and kids going up to university to, so that they could see them in youth groups, that they could begin debates. There are lots of resources out there. And the film is, it’s trudygold.com, and all you’ve got to do is just link on and get your kids to link on.
This is Les Berg, “The brilliant book, ‘Herbert Hoover and the Jews,’ gives the most detailed history, including a large section developing to the Bergson group.” Yes, I love this. I love our lockdown family. You know, you’ve got a lot of knowledge and together we can pull it all together.
This is from Romaine, “‘Jew hatred to understand link up to envy’ read Melanie Klein. It’s a sustainable and terrible beliefs system, starting with Abraham and his choices.” You know, once you get into psychology, and Jew hatred is a very fascinating and dark road. I remember Chaim Maccabee talking of, from a historical point of view of Judaism as the parent religion, and I’m sure Freud would have a lot to say about that.
Jonathan, “Ben-Gurion always said that to be a true dark Zionist one had to live in Israel.” That was his kind of Zionism. Louis Brandeis said something different. I mean, it’s fascinating and I’m sure many of you on your, who are all on the family today on the link up, what would we say? We would say we are supporters of the State of Israel. But some of us live in Israel, but many of us live in the diaspora. I believe now though, that there are more Jews living in Israel than live in the diaspora. But please don’t forget also that time I’m talking about, 1945, and of course in the session next Monday, I’m going to be talking about the Bricha Movement, and the survivors in the camps and what happened to them.
Look, it’s such, it’s such a complicated story, isn’t it? What does it mean to be a Zionist? For the people in, many of the people who survived in the camps, their first question was, who survived? You know, once you’ve come out of hell, and I’ve had the honour of working with many survivors and I’ve listened to their stories, and their first question, who survived? And many of them did go home. But we know what happened to them, particularly in Eastern Europe when they went home. There were over 500 murders in Poland alone. For all sorts of reasons. But the Jews bore the brunt of it. And you see after 1945, and I think speaking personally, I think this is also something that really suffuses Israel, be it a left-wing government or a right-wing government.
I often hear it said, “Why doesn’t Israel look after the diaspora better?” With propaganda I think at a time when it’s so much seared into the memory of Jews and in the memory of Israel at a time when a third of all Jews were murdered because they were Jews. It’s left a scar so deep that I wonder if they, I wonder how much they care about the opinion of the diaspora. It’s up to us, I suppose, if we want to improve. That’s my view. That if we want to improve the image of Israel.
Q: “During the War of Independence, how much assistance and support was provided by the British ?” A: Lots and lots and lots, Michael. We’d be redealing, this is a whole session on it. And can I lighten it a bit? One of my peculiar jobs, we used to run for sixth-formers, courses in Jewish history, and I used to teach at Eaton, this was a sixth-form option subject. And I had the kids for a long time. I had them a term and three hours a week. And I’ll never forget, the first question I ever asked them is, why are you studying? And one young man said, “I wanted to find out why my grandfather was on the Irgun hit list.” And I guess you can imagine who that boy was.
Trudy?
Yes.
I want to jump in and just say-
Yeah. for what it’s worth,- and I’m going to be in a lot of trouble for saying this, but I am happy to say it because I’ve worked in Israel, I’ve done a spent probably my entire adult life working for Israel and in Israel when I’m not doing my other job. I do think, I think I’ve sometimes found their arrogance of the Israelis very difficult to deal with. And I do think it’s very hard for us who are always working for Israel, always, to, you know, when there isn’t that much help coming from Israel. You know, we’re batting one way and there’s no real effort coming from the Israelis themselves. And I might add in the cultural world, I’ve had the biggest, my biggest issue with the many Israeli artists who do not help Israel one little bit. Or help us help Israel.
I suppose also, you’ve got now a different kind of Israeli identity, haven’t you?
Well, I think when you have a…
Almost post Zionist identity.
When you have a voice that is so anti-Israel, it’s one thing being-
Exactly.
the government anti-Israelists is another story.
Do you think it’s because there’s so much hatred of Israel that sometimes people can’t bear it and they turn against their own people? Is that part of it, Wendy?
You mean with-
You’re the psychologist.
the cultural world?
Yeah.
I think there are many issues at stake, but I’ve had a lot of very uncomfortable situations when I have met, stood up and spoken, you know, on behalf of Israel in a cultural arena, and I’ve had an Israeli, a group. Usually when there’s a group setting come back at me speaking very anti-Israel. First of all, people take notice of them. They get the attention. I’ve often and maybe wanting to be part of mainstream, I have no idea. But I’ve really, I have had, I’ve had issues and struggles and it’s been very difficult when I’ve been a lone voice. Although I have stood my, but.
It’s such a complicated issue because.
It is complicated.
It’s still, you know, in a way it’s not that it’s 70, 70 odd years ago, isn’t it, Wendy? And it’s still too soon to actually evaluate, I think. But what I do know is that I haven’t seen Jew hatred as strong since, in my cognizant lifetime, as it is today. And it isn’t helped by, particularly by Jews who themselves, look, I’m not saying for one minute that you cannot criticise the State of Israel. Of course you can, and its policies. Of course you can.
Or criticise each other.
Or criticise each other.
Yes. Exactly.
Within a safe arena.
But I know the other problem is that, look, we are the stubborn stiff neck people. Look at those different branches of Zionism I’ve talked about. We are so quarrelsome, aren’t we? It’s extraordinary. But I, in a way, I feel a little more hopeful than I have been and I think it’s because of Lockdown University, because there are so many interesting people online who I, and I think maybe together we can bring a bit more rationality into the argument. I hope so. I hope so, Wendy.
Stephen has just said, “What do you think of this, Wendy? We need sessions to discuss and try to understand rationally, why the Jew,” I have given lectures on Jew hatred, I’m afraid. The history of it. What is going to happen, once the website is up, you’ll be able to get past lectures, but I will be talking about it again.
This is from Basil Holtz. “I’ve just finished a book by Noa Tishby about Israel.” It doesn’t give the title. “What date in October ‘41, did Jewish immigration of Austria? My family were deported from Vienna to Lodz on October the 14th.” Ugh. It would’ve, I’m not sure. You see, I know that at the, I’ll have to check that because I’ve got, in the other room, I have a copy of that law that was actually instituted and it’s, I think it was at the beginning of October. So your family went from Vienna to Lodz, to the Lodz Ghetto. Oh my God. Okay. Judy.
“Names of books recommended on Zionism.” “The Zionist Idea,” by Arthur Hertzberg, “The Zionist Ideas,” by Gil Troy. Now these are source documents, but there’s very good introductions. I think the, and also the other book on Jewish history and Jewish identity is “The Jew in the Modern World,” by Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. But if you Google “The Jew in the Modern World,” I keep losing my, I’m sorry about my hand. I’ve left my pen in the other room. Which somebody online wonderfully sent.
Wendy, you are getting a lot of compliments. Lots of, let me see, what else have we got?
This is from Monica, “Quote, from a survivor, 'When there is nowhere for Jews to go, there will be Israel. We need it.’”
“At the Reception of the Hebrew,” this is from Rosalyn. “At the Reception of the Hebrew U, Einstein and Freud appeared next to each other. What did they talk about?” Yeah, I’m going to do, I’ve got to do a session on this. The trustees of the Hebrew University. If you think about it, that must have been the most extraordinary group of individuals. It was Einstein, it was Freud, it was Weizmann, and there’s a whole group of them, and they changed the world. And just think about it, in Palestine, at that period when you didn’t have a huge immigration, they still dreamt of creating the Hebrew University.
This is from Steven. “At the time of 9/11, a security analyst commented, ‘It was not so much a failure of state intelligence as a failure of imagination.’” Yeah.
Trudy, Trudy, I have to comment. Of course, not all Israelis are arrogant, you know. Of course not. I have many wonderful, wonderful friends, Isaac Herzog. We’ve got, there are many, many, many, many…
I didn’t. Wendy, I didn’t for a minute take it that way. and I don’t think any of the group did either.
No, no, no. They did. They did. That’s why I’m responding to-
Oh dear.
I’m responding to of course not Israelis are not. Please, I don’t ever want to be anybody to think.
[Trudy] Well I haven’t got there yet. Over. Yes.
Q: “Was it Begin who got the British out of Palestine?” A: Ah-ha. What got the British out of Palestine? Just as there are three Jews and five synagogues. What was responsible for the British leaving Palestine? I promise you I will try and present as fairly as possible all the arguments.
Oh, this from Danny Walson, “Re: what Wendy said. Is Isaac Herzog may help to improve Israeli diaspora relations.”
Oh, this is from Hindi. “Many people like Madoff and Sackler add to these negative feelings about Israel and Jews.” Now this is very interesting. This is a good point. Does a minority group have to behave in a very special, wonderful way every one of us, so that they won’t hate the whole all of us. David was talking about scapegoats on Sunday. I think most people I know try and behave in a good and just way because they believe it right. I don’t want to have to be, I suppose what I’m saying, will the day ever come when we don’t have to be so different when
Monte there, “Israeli Jews and Jewish Israelis. There’s a difference.” I dunno. Do you want to comment on that, Wendy? I don’t.
Leora, I’m not answering that question.
This is from Ilanna. “The South Africans had a march in 1947 against the White Paper. Does anyone have a record?” I think that’s not my speciality. Be great if someone online does know.
“There are so many Jews in Israel who fight against each other.” Yeah.
This is from Rebecca. “I’ve always thought Theodor Herzl was the Messiah.” Be careful. Okay, Wendy, shall we stop it there?
Yeah. Thank you Trudy. Thank you for wonderful participation. Very interesting.
[Trudy] Thank you, Wendy. Thank you. And thank you for those films. I think they’re beginning to really make a difference to kids.
Yeah. All right. All the best. Thank you.
Take care.
Thanks. Bye.